The fireman nodded understandingly and as the auto, in a cloud of dust, dashed up to the little depot the train, with a screech that sounded like the last defiance of the bully, shot round a curve and vanished with a cloud of black smoke.
"Beaten!" gasped the chief.
"We can telegraph ahead and have them arrested in New York," suggested Rob.
"No, perhaps it is all for the best," counseled Mr. Blake, "the parents of both those boys are respected citizens, and it would be a cruel grievance to them were their boys to be publicly disgraced. Let them work out their own salvation."
And so Jack Curtiss, Bill Bender and Hank Handcraft vanish for a time from the ken of the Boy Scouts, leaving behind them no regrets, except it be those of their parents who were for many months bowed down with the grief and humiliation of their boys' misdoings.
CHAPTER XXIII
SCOUTS IN NEED ARE FRIENDS INDEED
"Ta-ra-ta-ra-ta! Ta-ra-ta-ra-ta! Ta-ra-ta-rata! Ta-ra-ta-a-a!"
Andy's bugle briskly announced the last morning of the Boy Scouts' camp on Topsail Island. Already the first breath of autumn had begun to tint the leaves of the earlier fading trees, and the chill of the early dawn was noticeable.